The scorched mark on the doorstep was still warm when Nnanna made his decision.
He did not wait for the sun. He did not wait for the village elders to come with their false sympathies and their hidden fears. While the smell of ozone still hung heavy in the humid night air, he began to pack. His movements were frantic, fueled by a primal desperation that overrode the exhaustion in his bones.
"Nnanna, what are you doing?" Ugomma whispered, her voice trembling as she clutched the sleeping infant to her breast. Her eyes were wide, darting toward the open door as if the High Priest might materialize out of the shadows once more.
"We are leaving," Nnanna hissed, his voice low and jagged. "I will not leave our daughter for that monster to chew on. We will go to your brother's village in the delta. The spirits of the water are strong there; perhaps they can hide us from the fire of the sky."
Ugomma didn't argue. The terror of the prophecy was a physical weight on her chest. She wrapped Adadiogo in a thick cloth of woven cotton, shielding the babe's face as if the very moonlight might betray them.
They slipped out of the hut like thieves. Nnanna led the way, a heavy machete in one hand and a small sack of provisions in the other. They avoided the main path, cutting through the dense brush behind their compound. The forest was an orchestra of shadows, the tall Iroko trees standing like silent sentinels watching their retreat.
Nnanna marched with purpose. He knew these woods. He had hunted these trails since he was a boy. He calculated that by daybreak, they would be across the border of Umu-Oka, beyond the reach of the High Priest's staff.
They walked for hours. The sweat poured down Nnanna's back, and Ugomma's breath came in ragged gasps, but they did not stop. Not when the owls shrieked, and not when the thorns tore at their skin.
Finally, the trees began to thin. Nnanna felt a surge of hope. "Look," he whispered, pointing toward a clearing. "The main road to the delta is just ahead. We are clear, Ugomma. We are..."
He stopped. The words died in his throat, replaced by a cold, sickening dread.
They weren't at the main road.
As the mist cleared, Nnanna realized they were standing in front of a familiar, low hanging gate made of sharpened logs. To the left was the village shrine, and to the right was the communal meeting square.
They were back at the entrance of Umu-Oka.
"How?" Ugomma gasped, her knees buckling. "Nnanna, we walked south. I watched the stars. We walked away from the village for miles!"
Nnanna's face hardened. He didn't answer. He grabbed her arm, his grip bruising, and turned back into the forest. "It was the mist. The night played a trick on us. Come. We go again."
The second attempt was even more frantic. Nnanna ran until his lungs burned, carving a path through the thickest parts of the jungle where the sun never touched the ground. He ignored the compass of his mind and followed the raw instinct of a father protecting his kin. He pushed through vines and over fallen trunks, certain that this time, they had made it.
But when they broke through the tree line, the result was the same.
The village gate stood before them, silent and mocking. The scorched mark on their own doorstep was visible just a few yards away, still faintly glowing in the dark. It was as if the world had folded in on itself, a loop that led only back to their own doom.
Seven times they tried. Seven times the forest spat them back out into the center of the village they were trying to flee.
By the seventh time, the first gray light of dawn was beginning to bleed into the sky. Nnanna dropped his sack in the dirt, his body shaking with a mixture of exhaustion and a sudden, violent rage. He looked up at the bruised clouds, his eyes bloodshot and full of defiance.
"You coward!" Nnanna roared, his voice echoing through the silent village, waking the neighbors who cowered behind their locked doors. "You call yourself a King? You call yourself a God? You are a thief! You are a predator that hunts babes in the dark!"
"Nnanna, stop!" Ugomma begged, clutching the crying Adadiogo tighter. "Do not provoke him! Please!"
But Nnanna was beyond fear. He held his machete toward the heavens, his voice cracking with the weight of his grief. "I will never let you have her! I will not watch her wither away as a 'collection' for your amusement! If this is the life you have written for her, then I will end it myself! I will kill her with my own hands and send her back to the ancestors before I let a monster like you touch her skin!"
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the wind seemed to stop.
Then, the sky didn't just darken,it turned into a solid wall of ink.
A flash of white light, so bright it blinded them for a heartbeat, tore through the clouds. It wasn't followed by a normal rumble of thunder. It was followed by a sound so massive it felt like the earth was being split in half by a giant's axe.
BOOM.
The shockwave hit them like a physical blow. Nnanna and Ugomma were thrown to their knees, the breath knocked out of their lungs. The ground beneath them groaned, and the air suddenly smelled so strongly of burnt metal that they could taste it on their tongues.
Out of the swirling smoke and the sudden, heavy rain, the High Priest appeared. He didn't walk; he seemed to materialize from the very lightning that had struck the earth.
He stood over them, his white eyes glowing with a terrifying, rhythmic pulse. He raised his staff, and the blue sparks danced along the wood, hissing like a thousand angry vipers.
"Mortal," the Priest's voice boomed, but it wasn't the Priest's voice anymore. It was a chorus of a thousand storms, vibrating through the very dirt they knelt upon. "You speak of murder to save her? You think your tiny blade can cheat the Heavens?"
The Priest stepped closer, the Staff of the Bolt hovering an inch from Nnanna's throat. The heat coming from it was so intense it singed the hair on Nnanna's chest.
"The girl is not yours to kill. She is not yours to hide. She is the Sky's Reflection, and you are merely the dirt that holds her for a moment. If you raise a hand against her, I will not just take her,I will erase your lineage from the memory of the earth. I will turn Umu-Oka into a salt plain where nothing shall ever grow again."
Nnanna dropped his machete. His defiance vanished, replaced by a soul crushing terror. He pressed his forehead into the mud, sobbing like a child.
"She will live," the voice continued, softening into a low, predatory growl that made Ugomma's skin crawl. "She will grow. She will be the envy of every woman and the desire of every man and she will be mine. Do not seek to run again. The horizon is my border, and there is nowhere the sun touches that I do not own."
The Priest withdrew the staff, and as he did, the storm vanished as quickly as it had arrived. The sun finally broke over the trees, bathing the village in a deceptive, golden warmth.
Nnanna and Ugomma sat in the mud, broken and defeated. They looked at their daughter, who was now strangely silent, her dark eyes wide and staring up at the clearing sky.
They didn't try to run again. They knew now that they weren't just living in a village, they were living in a cage with invisible bars made of lightning.
They would raise her. They would protect her as best they could. But as Nnanna carried his family back into their marked hut, he knew the truth,they were just caretakers for a God who was waiting for his harvest.